


Summer and our Hearts are Hopeful

by PaperRevolution



Category: Les Misérables - All Media Types, Les Misérables - Victor Hugo
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, F/M, Future, Gen, Summer
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-05-13
Updated: 2013-05-13
Packaged: 2017-12-11 17:15:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,572
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/801151
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/PaperRevolution/pseuds/PaperRevolution
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Modern AU. Can be read as a prequel to Swerve, but you needn’t have read that to read this one.<br/>With the arrival of summer, Enjolras and his friends are full of the future, but the future, for some of them, has other ideas.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Summer and our Hearts are Hopeful

The onset of summer brings with it a new kind of restlessness, and by the time the last day of exams arrive, each of them feels like bursting out of their skins, shedding the detritus of an old year to expose the fresh, raw pinkness of a new one.

“I've failed,” Joly, emerging alongside Combeferre from their last exam of the year, insists, “I know I've failed.”

Combeferre raises her eyebrows. “I really doubt it,” she says, tugging at the hem of her shirt. It's a sweltering June afternoon; the pale blue cotton is sticking to her back. Joly, hurrying to catch up with her, notices the set of her shoulders and the downward jut of her chin, and knows that she, like him, is second-guessing her every answer; every choice of phrase, even. Her fretting, quieter than his though it might be, is no less obvious.

Courfeyrac meets them as they're crossing the Entwhistle Quad. His russet curls are plastered to his forehead; his face beams shiny pink. The first few days of summer do not agree with Courfeyrac, but give it a week, and he'll be newly tan, his few freckles almost disappearing into golden brown.

“That,” announces Courfeyrac vehemently, upon reaching them, “Nearly killed me. Who invented dramatic theory, and can we hunt them down and punish them for it?” He slings an arm expansively around Combeferre's shoulders, crushing the contents of her rucksack uncomfortably into the space between her shoulder-blades.

“I'm pretty sure there's more than one pioneer of dramatic theory, Courfeyrac,” she replies, not bothering to struggle, “Anyway, how are you planning to punish them, exactly? By talking them to death?”

Courfeyrac laughs easily. “I'm wounded,” he groans, and Joly splutters out a half-laugh. They pass through the glass-panelled double doors into the Humanities building – the quickest way out of the school, from here – and into cool dimness. Joly puffs out his cheeks in a sigh of relief and Courfeyrac, exaggeratedly, does the same.

“We're going straight there, yeah?” he asks, and Combeferre nods assent.

“I think so. Could we just -”

“Tell me you're excited,” their three pairs of shoes squeak on the linoleum floor. Courfeyrac lets go of Combeferre to stride ahead, looking back over his shoulder as he addresses her, “You're excited, right? It's the first day of freedom.”

“I'm excited,” says Combeferre obediently, lips pulling up at the corners into a small smile.

Joly and Courfeyrac laugh. They pass the unmanned reception desk and emerge from more double doors into the unforgiving sun, the road thrumming with midday traffic. Midday, which seems to Joly like the best gift the world could give them just now; an entire afternoon to themselves, the world waiting, suspended, for something to begin.

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

“I really don't care,” Eponine slams her bag onto the battered worktop with vitriol and pulls open the refrigerator door so forcibly that a bottle of mayonnaise comes tumbling out, landing with a hollow clatter – it's almost empty – on the kitchen floor. “I seriously, honestly don't care. I don't care that he's ignoring me. I don't care that he's avoiding me. I honestly don't. I don't know what the big deal is.” She seizes a half empty can of cheap lemonade and takes a long drink. “Ugh. Oh my god, that's disgusting.”

“All right,” some way behind Eponine, Feuilly slams the door shut – it sticks, and swings open insistently unless you give it a good, glass-rattling slam – and drops her own book-leaden satchel unceremoniously on the floor. “You don't care. Fair enough.” Her tone, pointedly neutral, makes Eponine let out an exasperated, hoarse noise between a shriek and a groan.

“Fine,” she submits, surprisingly quickly even for her, “I do care. But what am I supposed to do? He knows I like him. He knows that. And he's still fucking ignoring me. It's rude.”

Feuilly lets out a long breath and leans forward against the cool countertop. “You can't make Marius like you,” she says flatly, because she knows that any hint of sympathy creeping into her voice will only rile Eponine further. “He either does, or he doesn't. That's it.” She'd like to think that this is a difficult conversation because she doesn't understand Eponine. Actually, it's a difficult conversation because she does, but that's a whole different story.

“He's probably ignoring you because he doesn't know what to say to you,” she tries again, “Maybe he just wants you to give him a bit of time, or something.”

Eponine shuts the refrigerator door viciously and turns to lean back against it, arms folded across her bony chest.

“You're shit at this kind of thing,” she says. “You don't get it. You've got your stupid debate team friends.” She squeezes her eyes shut and presses the balls of her hands against the closed lids. Her breath comes out in ragged segments.

Feuilly doesn't say anything. She's trying to think of who, exactly, Eponine has in her life. And she's coming up short.

“Why don't you come with us, today?” she tries at last, “We're only going to the old park, but Courfeyrac's bringing music and Grantaire and Bahorel are bringing drinks – obviously – and it'll be predictable as anything but also really nice.”

Eponine snorts, dropping her hands to her sides, shoulders slumping. “Like any of that lot would want me around,” she laughs, harsh and plosive, “Crazy psycho-stalker Eponine, ruining everything with her moping and whining. No thanks.” She practically spits that final word. Anger and hurt and hopelessness are coiled up and smouldering inside her and maybe that sounds dramatic, but it's Eponine, and she's allowed to be dramatic. Look at what she's got – or, more accurately, what she hasn't got. Who does she even talk to?

She sidles past Feuilly, smelling of damp heat and cigarette smoke, and then she's gone, barrelling up the stairs at full force so that she can fling herself, as if her life depends on it, into the little room they share.

Feuilly's loose sigh blows strands of light brown hair away from her face. She doesn't know what to do with the knowledge of Eponine's situation; it sits, unresolved and undigested, in the pit of her stomach. What's the use of knowledge, anyway, if you can't use it?

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

Enjolras and Grantaire are walking down the embankment to join the others in the little dip of freshly mown grass where they sit, talking amongst themselves. Bahorel, who walked with them, has rushed ahead, bottles clanking in the flimsy plastic bag she's carrying. Enjolras watches her skid to a halt and hears, carried on the barely existent breeze, Courfeyrac's indignant, lilted cry of protest as she promptly changes the song playing from his speakers.

“I just don't understand it,” Enjolras says to Grantaire, “You've got the entire summer ahead of you, and money to go and visit new places and learn new things, and you're going to squander it on alcohol and carry on complaining about your parents.”

Grantaire shrugs. “That's the plan,” she responds, a touch pugnaciously.

“You've got a choice, though,” he tries to explain to her, “You don't have to stay here. You've got the means to go anywhere you want.”

“On my own? Yeah, that'd be a laugh. Why the hell bother?”

Enjolras is trying his hardest to be patient, but he's heard this yarn far too many times before. “From what you tell me, it couldn't be much worse than staying put.”

Grantaire ducks her head so that her lank brown hair obscures her features. This isn't diffidence; it's a pointed cue that they should stop talking about this right now, because she doesn't feel like it. “Where would I even go?”

“I don't know, Grantaire. Anywhere you want.”

“I don't want to go anywhere.”

She slopes off in front of him. Enjolras watches her go and tries to reconfigure the situation from her perspective. That only gives him more questions. Why won't she help herself? Why is it that she seems to want to talk to him, and want to ignore everything he says, at the same time? And what is he supposed to do about it, exactly? Enjolras dislikes powerlessness, though for a slightly different reason than Feuilly. He is motivated by a need to effect change – admitting that something or someone is a lost cause is a little like throwing up his hands and admitting defeat. It's giving up, when you get right down to it, and on that, Enjolras is rigid. Giving up is not an option.

He joins the others, sitting down on a blanket brought by Joly. They already passing around a bottle; Enjolras declines, opting instead for some sort of fruity iced tea (a hideous invention of Combeferre's mother's, but better than the moss-mouthed, cotton-headed feeling produced by alcohol, any day of the week).

Enjolras knows what they sometimes say about him. They say he's uptight. They say he's 'great, and everything', but he really needs to relax. They don't say it often (only, in fact, on days like this), and he tells himself he doesn't care. He doesn't, really; not all that much, at least. In the grand scheme of things, it's not exactly one of life's great tragedies.

He sips the ridiculous tea and looks around at the little group ranged there. Enjolras is a talker; when he has something to say, he can go on for hours. And he's one of those people, always with some idea or another to throw out there. But on days like this one, he'd much rather listen than talk. There's something whole and solid and comforting about it. So he sits, and listens, and watches. Courfeyrac and Bahorel, heads thrown back in laughter, sing along loudly and tunelessly to some song he doesn't know the words to. Lesgles is talking animatedly to a listening Joly; the sunlight catches the latter's red hair so that it's almost painful to look at directly. Grantaire has flung herself down beside Jehan and Feuilly, and the three of them sit in a sort of loose circle, Grantaire looking like a rangy hawk beside the smaller, slighter pair.

A pair of legs in dark blue trousers appear in Enjolras' periphery. Combeferre sits down beside him. The heat has made her wiry curls more untameable than ever; they stand out from her head in frizzy spirals. She doesn't look quite like her parents; she dresses conservatively, but there is an ineffable unkemptness about her which they, of course, lack.

“Ready for the summer?” there is just a hint of wryness in her tone. Enjolras smiles thinly.

“My father's already given me a lengthy pep-talk about the office internship he's secured for me in the city,” he tells her, “I really can think of a million better uses of my time than stapling booklets together and entering details into spreadsheets, but of course he doesn't see that. I'll value these business connections, one day, apparently.”

Combeferre wrinkles her nose. “Priorities,” she says with forced lightness.

“I was telling Grantaire that she should make the most of the freedom she's got,” Enjolras goes on, eager, now he has the chance, to broach the topic. “She has money to travel, and no commitments. But she's making excuses.”

“I'd try and talk her into something, but if she won't listen to you...”

“Then she won't listen to anything, I know. D'you know, her parents offered to pay for her to attend this expensive art school this summer, and she told them no, thanks, she's had enough of school.”

Combeferre sighs. “Don't, whatever you do, tell Feuilly that.” She tucks a stray curl behind her ear and looks at Enjolras sidelong. “Why are we talking about Grantaire, anyway? Grantaire can take care of herself.”

Enjolras pinches the bridge of his nose. “Yes, I know. Lots of infuriating people can. It's why the world's such a mess.”

“A mess that you intend to clear up, though.”

“Right.”

“Right.”

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

Later, the sky saturating itself a deeper blue, Jehan and Feuilly lie on their backs on the grass, looking up. Some fifteen metres away, Courfeyrac is attempting to cook something on a little throwaway barbecue. The acrid smoke rises in a meagre column, too far away to burn their throats or make their eyes smart.

“I'm going to learn to drive, this year, when I turn seventeen,” Jehan says out of nowhere, “Then next summer, we can do a trip around Europe.”

“So you can go to Italy and see the Keats-Shelley museum?” the slight upward lilt in her voce tells him that she's not quite taking him seriously.

“That and other things,” he says, “I don't know who would come. Bahorel might. Combeferre's parents might be a problem.”

“Well, what about yours? Would they be alright with you going off on your own?”

He laughs, though he hasn't considered this. “I wouldn't be on my own.”

There's a pause. Then: “Are you serious about this?”

Jehan turns onto his side, coming up on an elbow.

“Kind of,” is his slightly self-conscious response. He watches her face, trying to gage her reaction. Actually, the idea of travelling like that – the sheer expanse of it – makes him feel mildly terrified. But he's got the means to realise it, where some of his friends – Feuilly; Bahorel; even Combeferre with her rigid trust fund – don't.

Abruptly, she sits up. Now she's looking down at him, her wispy hair a tangle of dark straw; her green t-shirt bunching slightly at the waist because it's too large.

“I think,” she says, with disconcerting perceptiveness as far as Jehan is concerned, “You should do what you want to do.”

-o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o0o-

Enjolras watches. Combeferre, now, is talking with Bahorel and Bossuet. Courfeyrac flips burgers, making a show of his deftness, while Joly hovers nearby. Jehan and Feuilly are in a little world of two that, contrary to common belief, has nothing to do with the kind of wanting that anyone thinks it does. Grantaire, a little apart, lies on her stomach, propped up on her elbows with a bottle held loosely in one hand. The other picks desultorily at strands of grass. Enjolras considers joining her, and decides against it.

He knows – this is the thing, really, isn't it? - he knows for a fact that the others look up to him. In a lot of ways, he's asked for it. But it's a strange thing, to be the very centre of their group and yet at times, to stand so far at its periphery. They in their warm circle-world talk and laugh until their words run together, but Enjolras – well, he's not their equal, is he? He's done that himself, unknowing, and now they look up to him the way they might a teacher or a leader. But you don't confide in a leader. You don't tell jokes to a teacher. You don't, you don't. And will there come a day when they stop being interested in what he has to say, because he stands too much apart from them?

Would he change any of this, even if he could? He knows he would not.

A warm breeze, the first real wind of the day, blows his hair back from his face and ruffles the folds of his shirt. It's the first day of summer, and it feels no different than the day before it. It's the first day of summer, and he doesn't feel free.


End file.
